


Crowd

by sibley (ferns)



Category: The Flash (TV 1990)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Female Character, Friends to Lovers, Gay Male Character, Getting Together, Lesbian Character, Multi, Neurodiversity, Or Is It?, Polyamory, autistic characters, barry doesnt know what he is & thats ok, ish, some internalized homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-30 01:29:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12643368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: Barry never expects the thing with Julio, or for it all to work itself out once itdoeshappen.Somehow, it goes well anyway.





	Crowd

Barry never expects the thing with Julio. Or for it all to work out.

Tina-yes. That’s predictable. That’s something that anybody can see. It takes them a little while to realize that their platonic dates aren’t so platonic, but once they do realize then that’s that. She starts spending more time at his place and he spends time at hers and poor Earl clearly just wants them to pick a place so his humans aren’t splitting time.

And then after the thing with Pike and the missile and the horrible future happens, Barry realizes that what he really wants to do with Julio is get kissed senseless by him. Which is… A revelation.

He goes home and cries for three hours in confusion because-well-he’s dating Tina and Tina’s  _ great  _ and he doesn’t want to break up with her over this, because he might be gay except he’s not, just because he has dreams about Julio kissing him in the lab and thinks about it every time he sees him doesn’t mean that Barry’s anything but straight. And-and being in love with two people-that’s not supposed to be allowed, is it?

Then Megan comes back and it all just gets more confusing.

Barry’s sure he doesn’t love Megan. He thought he did, once. But he doesn’t. He likes her and he wants to be her friend and stay in contact with her and be around her for hours but he doesn’t love her. Barry just wants to be her friend.

And then Tina sits him down on the couch in his apartment and confesses that last time she and Megan saw each other, they kissed.

Barry’s mouth goes dry and he thinks about Julio’s blood on his hands and a fake uniform and volts of electricity in his brain and lips on his in the middle of STAR Labs while a countdown echoes in his ears. “I kissed Julio, once.” It’s all he  _ can  _ say. “In the future. That time I told you about. I kissed you, too.”

She squeezes his hand. “What does… Well. What does this mean?”

“I don’t-I don’t know.” Barry swallows. “Julio’s still seeing his girlfriend, I-I don’t think they’re going to break up any time soon. You and Megan-I think-”

“It was one kiss while we were both high on adrenaline. It doesn’t have to mean anything,” Tina tries to lie to herself. If she focuses, she can feel the fabric of the Prank outfit that Megan so despised underneath her hands. Megan grinning into her mouth and telling her that she was a good kisser. Megan using her thumb to correct the smudges of her lipstick that had gotten onto Tina’s face afterwards. It had meant something.

“I think it did.” Barry digs his fingers into his knees. “I mean-I’m not-I’m not gay. Or at least I don’t think I’m gay. Does kissing Julio make me gay?”

“I don’t think so.” Tina frowns. “I have to-research. I need to do research. Yes. That’s what I need to do.”

She’s doing that anxious fast flicking thing she does with her fingers when she wants to figure something out but doesn’t have the resources to do it. It’s a very specific and distinctive motion, or at least it is to Barry, since she does it so often when she’s around him. Almost subconsciously, he starts rocking back and forth in place in response, as if her frantic and nervous energy leaving her body and jumping into him like a static shock.

“I think I need to do research too.” Barry swallows and knots his fingers in his hair. He rocks a little faster as Earl sets his head down in his lap. He scratches him behind his ears. “This-this won’t change anything between the two of us, right? For now?”

“For now, no.” Tina switches from flicking her hand to shaking it fast. “What we have is stable. Just because there are a few unknown variables in it now doesn’t mean it isn’t still stable for the time being. We just have to figure this out.”

God, Barry hopes they can figure this out.

* * *

As it turns out, Barry and Tina aren’t gay.

Megan and Julio are.

The girl that Julio said he was dating is  _ also  _ apparently gay and not, in fact, dating Julio.

Barry’s whole world feels like it has been flipped upside-down.

Somehow, Julio’s the one who flips it right-side up again.

He doesn’t know about the future where they kissed before Julio died. He doesn’t know about any of that. Barry can’t put to words how grateful he is that that’s true. But he kisses Barry in the lab anyway, the door unlocked and open enough that Barry’s heart is in his throat the whole time.

All four of them sit down the next day despite Megan’s complaining that she has a  _ schedule  _ to stick to and can’t come running every time Barry calls. Barry tells her that that’s why Tina called her and asked her to come back to Central City and Megan shrugs and says that’s fair.

Megan tells them all that she’s a lesbian within two seconds and that because of that she’s never going to have sex with Barry again and he’s just going to have to live with that fact. Barry blinks and says that he didn’t expect her to  _ want _ to have sex with him again and then Megan starts making fun of him and it seems like the night is going to dissolve into tiny pieces before Julio interrupts their shouting by banging his water glass on the coffee table like it’s a gavel.

“Sorry for the noise, Earl,” he apologizes to the whining dog underneath said table before looking at the rest of them. “I’m not sorry to all of you. Just to him. Megan, nobody is asking you to have sex with Barry. It’s perfectly understandable that you wouldn’t want to, but I’ll gladly do it for you.”

Barry blushes and hugs himself a little bit. “You will? That’s very nice of you.”

Julio nods. “I will. But I think we should probably do what we all came here to do and work this out instead of yelling at each other because Barry accidentally implied that he was incompetent in bed.”

“This might be the best day of my life,” Megan decides, crossing her arms.

Somehow, they get things untangled.

Megan is a lesbian and she’s been in love with Tina since she first laid eyes on her, but she only figured out she was a lesbian and not something else recently. Tina’s decided that the bisexual label fits her perfectly, which is clearly a relief for her since she  _ needs _ labels to function. Julio’s gay and has always known that but is never been open about it to people he doesn’t trust, which means that only his parents, Contrell-who turns out to be Julio’s ex boyfriend-and the three of them know. Barry confesses that he’s got no idea what he is. The best he can figure out, he’s straight with only one exception. Maybe he’s bisexual too, like Tina, but he has no idea.

Earl runs back and forth between the four of them, not sure who he wants affection from but usually choosing Julio. Barry playfully calls him a traitor for that.

Megan’s the first one to leave after getting a call from someone-an ex, apparently. As soon as she’s gone Tina leaves, probably glad somebody else took the awkwardness of leaving first for her. She says she has to go home and do some more research to figure things out. But that leaves Julio and Barry (and Earl) sitting in awkward, uncomfortable silence.

“I’m just gonna leave…” Julio stands up. “This was a good talk. I’ll see you at work tomorrow?”

“I won’t-uh, I won’t tell anybody, if you’re worried about that,” Barry promises. “I wouldn’t do that. I don’t know if you thought I would, but I wouldn’t. I promise.”

Julio’s shoulders relax a little. “I didn’t think you would, but thanks. Still good to hear.”

Barry offers him a shaky smile and a thumbs up and watches him leave after saying goodbye to Earl.

Earl comes back and sets his head down on Barry’s knee. Barry sighs. “When did I fall in love with my best friend, Earl?”

With Tina, he can picture it clearly. It was after the thing with Gideon, when he was doing everything in his power to stop her and Dr. Wenerke from dying. That had been when he  _ properly  _ fell in love with her. Everything before that had just been friendly and platonic and while that was fine he much prefered the way it had ended up.

But with Julio… Things were different. If he thought back to it, Barry realizes that there were a lot of signs that he was head over heels for his best friend before he even realized it himself. Like how he made any excuse to touch him, or the weird feelings that might’ve been jealousy when he saw Julio and his ‘girlfriend’ together, or the warm bubbly feeling in his chest when Julio smiled at him or-

It had been so  _ gradual _ that now that Barry had figured out what all those feelings meant, it was too late to back out of them.

Barry tries to convince himself that the feelings will fade gradually. After all, he’s not harboring any more flames for Iris, and he loved her for a long time, didn’t he? So these feelings will fade just like those ones did. Whatever Julio feels for him will disappear too. It has to.

* * *

It doesn’t.

Barry avoids Julio when they’re not at work now. There’s tension there and he doesn’t have any idea what he’s supposed to do with it so he tries to ignore it. He tells Tina about it, though. She’ll know what to do, right? (Tina, who is even more incompetent when it comes to relationships than he is, has no idea what to do.)

James Jesse is rotting in prison for what he’s done and Megan is sitting on Barry’s kitchen table smoking and wearing no pants while Tina talks to her earnestly about psychological damage and Megan poorly pretends not to be listening.

Barry’s not sure when Megan moved in, but somehow she did without him even noticing that it was happening.

He rifles through their mail-one letter from Alpha and Fosnight with a bunch of pictures attached of Alpha sitting on what looks like a pile of money and waving to the camera, one note from Stacey that she probably delivered herself with a photo of Lily attached (the note is about how she’s met someone very nice that she’s serious about who is very understanding of her situation and does Barry want to meet them? She misses him), and some of the magazines that Megan keeps charging him for even though she’s the one ordering them.

Megan takes the magazines and starts reading one, still sitting on the table. Barry frowns at her. “Please don’t smoke in my house. Especially since I know you’re trying to quit.”

She puts her cigarette out with her fingers and then points it at him. “Fine.”

Barry doesn’t miss how Tina’s looking at her, eyes lingering on Megan’s bare thighs and on the small, thin scar that cuts up and across one of them from a failed murder attempt. How her gaze is split between that and the way Megan’s lip curls up in a little smile when she sees that Tina is looking at her. For some reason, he doesn’t mind. Megan  _ is  _ pretty, in an intimidating and tough and knotted kind of way. And-

“You can-” Barry coughs. He can’t believe he’s about to say this. But he also  _ can,  _ because  _ clearly  _ it’s something they both want badly. “If you two want, you can kiss. I don’t mind. I mean-I won’t stop you from doing it.”

“You wanna watch, perv?” Megan raises her eyebrow and uses her legs to pull Tina closer to her, making Tina’s face turn cherry red with surprise. She’s  _ horribly  _ aware of the fact that Megan is wearing nothing but her ‘pajama’ shirt.

“No?” Barry blinks and his eyebrows furrow. “Why would I want to? Unless you want me to? I don’t understand.”

Megan rolls her eyes and tugs Tina closer, using her hands this time. She cups Tina’s jaw in her hand and grins. “You look good this morning.”

Barry turns away, feeling awkward. He  _ knows  _ this isn’t the first time they’ve kissed, but there’s a difference between knowing that and seeing it.

But if this is-if this is really happening, this thing that got started between Megan and Tina, then he has to talk to Julio.

There might be a solution to this.

* * *

After their second session of sitting down and talking it out, this time in which Barry’s ability to satisfy in bed is  _ not  _ called into question, they figure it all out.

Since Megan’s somehow living in their house anyway, that won’t change. She’ll just start being Tina’s partner, too, while Tina is still Barry’s girlfriend and Barry and Julio are… Something. Dating for sure, but they don’t know what to call it outside of that.

But it makes the tension in between all four of them dissolve some. And what remains becomes comfortable.

Julio ends up moving in about three months later when everything is still sailing smoothly, despite Barry having no idea what he’s doing half the time, Megan getting exasperated with the fact that the other three are colossal nerds, and Julio and Barry almost getting caught in a fairly heated kiss at work.

If anybody asks, they have an excuse-Julio and Megan are dating and living with the two of them semi-permanently for personal reasons. In reality, the only reason why they have two bedrooms is because Barry’s bed is nowhere near big enough for four people sleep in, much less do anything else.

They make sure to keep it a secret from everyone except people they trust. Henry, Nora, Alpha, Contrell and Linda, and Jay’s grave. People who won’t tell.

Barry comes home on their anniversary, which is technically actually the anniversary of the time they all went on a date and pretended to be dating each other and not the anniversary of the day they all decided to start dating, to find Tina trying (and abysmally failing) to cook while Julio tries in earnest to help her get it right with Megan lying down on the floor getting her face licked by Earl.

He’s pretty sure he’s never going to get used to this, but he loves it all the same.


End file.
